November 2016 - Ann Henry Editor and Author

Art or Elephant Ears?

Have you ever written a chapter, scene, or page of dialogue or description that you thought was truly excellent, then reviewed it the next day and thought it positively awful? I have, any number of times. And I gather from what other writers report that many of them have had the same experience.

If you yourself can’t judge your own writing without swinging from extreme negative criticism to high praise, then how can you know whether your writing is truly good? Is it painting the picture you want to paint? Is it drawing the reader into the story? Is it building suspense, gaining empathy for your protagonist, causing the reader to reflect on the great mysteries of life?

Your right brain wants to believe, but your left brain wants to criticize. After all, it’s the supreme editor, and if it can’t find anything wrong with the right brain’s work, then the left brain is out of a job. Therefore, it would seem that the only thing to do is to let someone else decide the merit of your work.

Now, that is not always the best idea. Ultimately, it is up to you, the author, to determine what you want to say with your writing and how best to communicate it. Many long-time writers have come to terms with this conundrum and learned to trust their own instincts. They have no need for or interest in anyone else’s input while working on a manuscript. That can be a good thing. But what about the novice who hasn’t fully developed zir author voice and needs some help?

With the aid of a friend who literally walked around London with my manuscript in her arms, going from one literary agency to another, I was able to obtain a top London agent, Tessa Sayle, to represent A Bit of Sun, my first novel. Before she flew to the West Indies to meet me, Tess sent me a letter noting a dozen or so places in the manuscript that she found confusing or thought should be revised for one reason or another. I made those changes quite easily and without complaint. No problem, no argument. If those few details were my agent’s only criticisms, I was sailing before the wind.

However, by the time we actually met in person, Tess had received half a dozen rejection letters from editors in the UK and so recommended I just “chalk this one up to experience” and start working on my next novel.

As you can well imagine, I resisted this advice and pressed her to come up with a way to “save” my book, a way to make it more appealing to current editors and publishers. Tess gave it a bit of thought and then suggested that I might cut a major portion of the odyssey section of the novel, which admittedly includes some highly unlikely events, and spend more time on the antagonist, which might appeal to the publishing world’s desire to see more fiction pertaining to power and greed.

I nodded as I sat before her, thinking that this could be done, and perhaps it was worth a try. But when I returned to the manuscript with the intention of actually committing such a gutting, I realized that it was quite impossible. Not literally impossible, of course, but thematically impossible. It would yank the heart right out of my story. How then would my protagonist ever know the strength of his own character? How would he learn to question tradition or come to understand the emotions buried deep in his heart?

As for power and greed, I have never had much interest in either. Some may want to read about characters whose main goals in life are financial gain and dominance over others, but I am not among them. And if I don’t care to read such a book, why on earth would I want to write one?

So I told Tess no, I couldn’t (wouldn’t) do it, and years later simply published the book myself because I know it’s a good story well told regardless of whether anyone else wants to publish it. In other words, it’s art to me, and I refuse to let the dictates of commercialism turn it into elephant ears. (And by elephant ears I mean that “treat” made of fried flour with a bit of sugar thrown in that even stray dogs in the Dominican Republic won’t eat.)

On the flip side, I am most grateful to my agent and other friends who read my manuscript and told me that this or that passage bothered them or did not seem true to character. I gave their comments serious consideration and, often times, decided to revise or delete those passages, much to my later relief. In those cases, I’m sure they were right. Other times, after due consideration, I kept the passages questioned and have no regrets.

Bottom line? If you do have others read your manuscript prior to publication, listen to what they have to say, try to find out why they disapprove of any passages they don’t like, and then decide whether those passages should be kept, revised, or tossed. When it comes to your own work, only you can decide what is art and what is elephant ears.

Creative Writing

A Little Goes a Long Way

Fiction writers pay great attention to making their characters seem like real people, and that includes the way they speak. It makes sense that a seasoned homicide detective with three well-armed, menacing criminals advancing upon him would exclaim something other than “puddly jump!” upon discovering that he is backed into a corner in an alley and has just run out of bullets.

I have nothing against the use of four-letter words where appropriate in fiction, and this would certainly seem to be one of those cases. So, yes, if I were writing this story, I would certainly use a realistic expletive here befitting both the character and the situation. The problem arises when such words are overused in fiction—in other words, when you have your f-word-flinging character use that word as often as such a person might do in real life.

“But isn’t that being realistic?” you ask. “And isn’t that what we fiction writers are supposed to do?”

Yes, and no. We are supposed to make our characters seem realistic, and that is why our policeman above would use such an expletive (just one would be sufficient; he doesn’t have time for another in this case anyway). The reader expects it and even derives some satisfaction from it in this instance. The problem lies when this character’s speech is peppered with such expletives all the time, even when not in moments of great stress. In other words, the reader will tire quickly of hearing this detective constantly speak in the following manner for no good reason:

“Yesterday, while I was driving down the expletive deleted highway, I ran out of expletive deleted gas and had to coast all the way down the expletive deleted ramp only to discover that the expletive deleted gas station at the expletive deleted exit was expletive deleted out of business!”

Okay, maybe use one of these expletives—the last one, perhaps?—but that will do. I mean, really, six in one sentence? A little over the top, wouldn’t you say? Well, maybe you wouldn’t, but trust me: most of your readers would. They may feel so beaten over the head with these slap-you-in-the-face expletives that they have trouble keeping up with the story.

One such book that still sticks in my mind fifty years after reading it is Love Story, by Erich Segal. I was a freshman in college when I read it and couldn’t help but notice that a college student in the novel talked just like my friends and I, now finally released from the controls of our more civilized parents, did. I realized while reading the novel how true to reality this aspect of Segal’s character was, but I also noticed that seeing that s-word umpteen times per page whenever this character was speaking soon began to irritate me.

Don’t get me wrong, I still liked the novel (I was an 18-year-old female; I had no choice), but the fact that one of the few details I remember about the book is the overuse of such expletives says something important, I think, for us writers to consider when we are tempted to use such words in our fiction.

The same advice applies to dialect: very much is too much. Try using syntax or commonly used colloquial expressions or phrases instead to remind readers that this character is from Jamaica, Pakistan, or the Deep South. Two of my favorite such phrases from the West Indies are “He sent my jumby to the bush!” and “I met it there.” How much more charming than leaving off the final g in an -ing word or misspelling the word there by writing it as they-uh.

Remember: A little goes a long way, so don’t overdo it.